Tag Archives: republican voter id laws

Paul Weyrich, “father” of the right-wing movement and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, Moral Majority and various other groups states in this video that he doesn’t want everyone to vote. He still gives weekly strategy sessions to Republicans.

Florida Republicans took voter suppression to brazen extremes. After the 2010 election, Republican Gov. Rick Scott instructed Secretary of State Ken Browning to compile a massive database of alleged “non-citizen” voters. This resulted in a 91-year-old World War II veteran who won a Bronze star being told by the state of Florida to prove he is a citizen or be removed from voter roll.

Discrimination, fear, and intimidation are alive and well this election year. The unprecedented attacks against African Americans and Latinos right to vote, by well-funded and highly organized groups linked to the Tea Party and other right wing groups, has resulted in both communities joining forces to defend our constitutional right to vote.

View full size Tracking commentary and opinion from around Central New York, the state and nation: Thursday’s Topic: Monica Zingaro, of Syracuse, writes about voting wrongs in the Readers’ Page of today’s Post-Standard.

Even Fox news acknowledges that Republicans has actively been involved in voter suppression. They state “In recent months, Latinos have been subjected to many forms of harassment: voter purges, voter ID laws, the threat of closing polls, targeting of nonprofit groups that conduct voter-registration drives, and automated calls designed to confuse people.

At the same time, they are also facing a political witch-hunt in which proof of citizenship laws aimed at undocumented immigrants are used as the excuse to instill fear and confusion among Latino voters” in the above article.

Voter Intimidation Billboards

Civil rights groups charged these intimidating billboards were meant to frighten lawful and confused voters away from the polls. Color of Change launched a petition demanding Clear Channel remove the ads, as the company has done previously with campaigns it deemed too controversial.

According to Reuters, Clear Channel belatedly invoked its policy against anonymous political advertising. When offered the choice between identifying itself and removing the ads, the “private family foundation” behind them chose to take them down, Clear Channel said.

The billboards appear in Cleveland, Columbus and Milwaukee. They popped up just as early voting began in Ohio. Reports of similar scare tactics, such as robo-calls and threatening flyers, designed to deter voters in black and Latino neighborhoods recur each election year as polls begin to open. As Brentin Mock has reported for Colorlines, early voting has been a crucial part of increasing black turnout and tea party groups in states like Ohio and Florida have worked to limit it, under the guise of combating voter fraud. There remains no meaningful evidence of voter fraud in early voting, or on Election Day for that matter.

Funder Of Billboards Exposed

The anonymous funder of more than 140 threatening billboards in black and Latino neighborhoods across Ohio and Wisconsin has chosen to take down the ads rather than identify itself, according to Reuters. The billboards played on the myth of “voter fraud,” invoking law and order images like a judge’s gavel over the words “Voter Fraud Is a Felony!” and listing jail time as punishment.